Bringing Back the Mammoth

For most of the last ice age, woolly mammoths roamed the cold grasslands of Europe, Asia and North America, grazing in herds beside wild horses and bison. Most populations disappeared roughly ten thousand years ago, although a small group survived on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, until about four thousand years ago. In recent years, a handful of scientists and companies have announced an ambition that once belonged to science fiction: to bring the mammoth, or something very like it, back to life. The proposal is serious enough to deserve a careful look at two separate questions, what is actually possible and whether it should be done at all.